


lost the last place I could stand

by bemusedlybespectacled (ardentintoxication)



Series: Maleval Week 2014 [7]
Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Firefly Verse, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, I don't speak Mandarin at all, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Maleval Week, Medical Experimentation, Parenthood, Slavery, Slow Burn, Spaceships, this is so late oh gosh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:57:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2274039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentintoxication/pseuds/bemusedlybespectacled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out in the 'verse there's the ones with power and the ones without, and Mal's aimin' to be the first.</p><p>For Maleval Week: the day 7 prompt was "Blood (+AU)."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fènfēi

She's a tiny thing when the Alliance comes to her parents. They live on one of the moons in the Georgian system; not much, but it's theirs. She doesn't remember much of that world, where folk didn't need anybody's help but their neighbor's, but she remembers the Alliance well enough.

* * *

She's an orphan, and so is he, and maybe his parents were Alliance and hers were Browncoats but that doesn't mean much when you're both on the same tiny planet with nothing else to do but work and hope you don't starve 'til the next supply ship comes in.

"One day," he tells her, "I'm going to live there," and he points to the stars as if they're not so very far away.

"In the Core?" she asks.

He nods, grinning, teeth white in the darkness. "I'll have my own ship, my own planet, and everyone will know my name."

* * *

"Tell me about Persephone," she says. He throws back his head and laughs, teeth white in the darkness.

"Crowded. Everyone's always elbowing everyone out of the way."

"Even you?"

"Shi, even me," he says, and it never occurs to her how different he is from that gentle boy she knew.

* * *

He doesn't take much to prove his loyalty, his utter indifference to the Border Planets and the people who live there. She imagines he laughs about it afterwards with his friends. He had a camera with him, when he came back, to show her holographs of Sihnon's lights and Ariel's fashions. Maybe she's among the pictures now.

She's colder, afterwards. Her tongue is rough when she barters with Alliance supply ships, more of the profits making their way into her pockets for her to get off this little moon. She doesn't go to the holler to look at the stars anymore: it's too much like visiting a graveyard. And anyway, she doesn't want old memories. She wants claws and teeth and horns, she wants to see them all bleed, she wants to see Stefan's face as he falls out of the sky. She goes offworld and she doesn't look back.

* * *

She visits other planets in the system for a while, Daedalus and Di Yu and what's left of Hera. She'll find work, enough to get her to the next planet, before skipping out.

She's on Salyut when she sees him: a man, dark-haired and bright-eyed. He's between a burly man and two vicious dogs, pinned against an alley wall and panic-stricken.

"Please," he's saying, "it's not what you think-"

"Do I look like some yúbèn de kid who'll believe anything? Look, come quiet and I won't have to sic my boys on you, and take you back to the returns office all bloodied up-"

"Please, you don't-"

Not bothering to hear more, she strides into the alley like she owns it. Like she owns him. "Ah, there you are," she says, putting on the thickest Core accent she can. Imperious as a queen, she turns on the bounty hunter. "Has my man been giving you any trouble?"

The dark-haired man raises his eyebrows, but looks respectfully at the ground, the picture of a perfectly trained slave.

"No, ma'am," the hunter's saying, suddenly flustered. "Not as such. I thought he was a..."

"What?" she snaps.

"An escaped one, ma'am. Fits the type, you might say."

"Well," she says, steel beneath her tongue, "that's a rather awkward misunderstanding."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I might forget the attempted _theft_ of my _property_ if you get out of my sight."

The bounty hunter takes the hint and runs off, his dogs behind him.

When he's gone, the man lifts his eyes to hers. He's grinning. "Well, that was something to see."

"I'm glad my saving your life was interestin' enough for you," she says, slipping back into her more comfortable, natural tones, and turns on her heel to leave. She makes it three steps before he calls out to her.

"Hey, wait! I'm sorry, that was rude, just- look, just hear me out."

She stops. "I'm listenin'."

"Please, get me off this planet and out of slavers' hands, and I'll do anything. Whatever you need."

"A ship," she tells him. "I need to find a ship."

* * *

It takes them a while to come up with funds, but she wants to get her ship honest, if nothing else. That way no one can say it isn't really hers.

She names it _Fènfēi_ , to fly, because of all things in the 'verse, it's what she wants the most.

* * *

This is how it goes: she's security, he's transportation.

"Learned the mechanics first," he says, engine grease in the creases of his scars and in his hair. "Learned the flying later." The engine makes a trilling sound as it starts back up again. "I'm good at learnin' things I'm not s'pposed to."

This is how it goes: he gets the jobs, she takes them.

He's good with folks, good at finding work for her. Bodyguard details, mafia hits, whatever needs doing that most think is dangerous or dirty. He's a constant shadow at her side, though he doesn't often do her work. "I'm keeping an eye on you," he says when she asks.

This is how it goes: she keeps him safe from the folk who want to find him. He gets her to where she wants to go. As partnerships go, it's about as simple as it can be.

* * *

She gets the ping in the Cortex a few years into their partnership. She gets Diaval to sort it out and see what it is, and he interrupts her in the kitchen a few hours later, looking frazzled.

"Stefan and his wife," he says. "They've had a child."

She chews the protein bar she's eating carefully, forcing herself to swallow. "Oh," she says, too calmly.

Still wary of her, he says, "There'll be a christening. All Albion's invited, probably Avalon, too. It looks to be a grand celebration."

"A grand celebration for a baby," she says, lips curling upwards. "Jīngcǎi."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations for the Chinese in this chapter (keeping in mind that I'm going solely off Google Translate and online dictionaries):
> 
> Shi - yes  
> yúbèn de - stupid  
> Fènfēi - to spread wings and fly  
> Jīngcǎi - wonderful


	2. Chāchìnánfēi

Work comes first (of course, it always does), so she doesn't bother to go to the christening. Instead, she waits. She has Diaval keep an eye on the little beast, though, every scrap of gossip from the tabloids and their underground contacts and whatever sources the Cortex has to offer.

"Got a lot of presents at her christening," he'll say, barging onto the bridge while she's trying to chart a course, as if that's the sort of information that's useful to her. Or, "'Parently she's a very bright little girl," equally useless.

Mal sends her own gifts, hacking into his dedicated source box and leaving it ever-so-subtly changed, little shifts in the code that only someone very skilled or very paranoid would see. Nothing that can be traced back to her directly, of course, but he has to know it's her. I can see you, she says with every tap of her keys. One day I'll have my revenge. Just not today. He changes his password more frequently than he gets his hair cut, yet she can't seem to stop herself from cracking it every time.

They're passing by Albion when Diaval knocks on the bridge door with some warm protein soup and more information. "Here's something odd," he says, handing her the bowl. "Stefan pulled her out of preschool. Official story is that she's staying with aunts on Avalon."

Mal raises an eyebrow. "Stefan don't have any sisters. No kin at all."

Diaval nods. "So where'd she go, then?"

* * *

Turns out she's at some fancy Alliance school for the genius kids of rich parents.

"Didn't think Stefan had the genes for that," says Mal.

"Maybe the smarts are on her mother's side," says Diaval, and Mal laughs like she hasn't in years.

She sinks her savings into fixing up the ship some- not that a Firefly class is anything fancy anyway, but it needs its panels polished up for her plan to work.

"You sure this is a good idea, captain?" he says while she's going over fuel expenses, but she doesn't pause, not when her gears are turning sure as the engine's turbines. Can't stop what's already moving. "Do you even have a plan? And why the hell are you takin' out your jīfèn on-"

"Bìzuǐ," she says without looking up. "I'm doin' it with or without your help."

"And what is it you're even plannin' on?"

Maleficent shrugs. "Scare him a bit, let him know that his life's not as safe as he thinks."

"And going after a kid will do that?"

"Yes," she says, and her eerie calm is more frightening to him than even her anger. And he's seen her angry, when a job goes bad, when they don't get paid, when some condescending shuāirén makes a comment about what work Mal could do instead. This is anger so old it's become a part of her, and he understands it, even if he doesn't like it.

"Fine," says Diaval at last. "Just another con, right?"

* * *

Mal has dreams sometimes that start with stargazing, shoulder to shoulder in the holler.

When she wakes up, she'll get some water from the cistern. The clean metallic taste is nothing like the sickly-sweet wine he gave her, the one he said was all the rage in the Core. She'll dive into the Cortex a while, look for contacts, distract herself, try to remember that she's past all that now.

This time, she goes up to the bridge, where she knows Diaval will be sleeping in the pilot's chair, curled up in a way that can't possibly be comfortable. She shakes him awake, one hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, cap'n," he slurs.

"How close are we?"

He blinks sluggishly at the readings. "Almost there, actually."

"You know the plan?"

"Much as I ever do."

"Don't improvise too much, this place is-"

"Relax," he says. "I know, I read the chatter on the Cortex." He raises his eyebrows at her. "We can pull out now if you're doubtful."

"I have to do this. He needs to-"

"I know what he needs to," says Diaval. "I was askin' if you're sure."

"I'm sure."

"Then we'll be fine."

"I could go without you, if you're so worried."

"And if you get nabbed, you can just tell them you were magically holding a gun to my head, that's just-" The proximity alarm beeps. "That's it, here we go."

He steers Fènfēi towards the spot the nav sat says is for cargo ships. They're in.

* * *

This is the plan: they buy off the regular supply ship for their cargo. They deliver it, legit as you please. Diaval keeps them distracted with the usual banter while Mal slips in and out, and they're made.

The kid's room, according to their very anonymous contact, is at the end of a long hall, though one with surprisingly little security. Mal picks the lock (thinking nothing of the fact that the door is locked at all) and opens the door. She isn't sure what she should expect, but it's not for the kid to get up and toddle over to her, holding her arms out in a stark plea to pick her up.

"Too easy," she says to herself, but she picks her up anyway, why not.

Klaxons start blaring once she's a good ways down the hall, and she sprints the rest of the way down the maze of halls and out onto the supply dock, the kid bouncing in her arms.

"Didn't even get tipped," says Diaval, jogging beside her, "on account of going so slow-"

"Just start the engine and get us out of here!" she snaps, as Alliance folk draw guns from their long white coats.

Diaval makes it up the ramp to the cargo hold ahead of her, smacking the buttons to close it while Maleficent is still on it. He's up the stairs and running for the bridge before it's even fully closed, his long legs getting him up there two or three at a time.

Fènfēi rumbles, her engines bucking against the school's landlock. He flicks a few switches on the console, types a few lines of code to lift it- it's gone. He hadn't even finished sequencing it yet.

"Too easy," he says to himself, but it doesn't matter, they're out.

* * *

The kid's too quiet, too stiff, almost like a real short grown-up, but she's just cute enough, though Mal's no judge of that. She stares up at them with solemn blue eyes and holds up her arms for Diaval to pick up, and the gorramn idiot caves in and hugs her like she's his own, bouncing her a bit.

"What's the plan now, captain?"

Mal shrugs. "Not sure yet. Let's see how her daddy handles her bein' gone."

"Alright," he says, though he's not really listening. "Come on, ānān," he says to the girl. "Let's get you a snack, yeah?"

* * *

They move behind a burned-out moon for a week, not daring to land, until there's a ping in the Cortex that says that Stefan's darling daughter is missing. The mass wave he sends out is teary-eyed, pathetic, a desperate plea throughout the 'verse to bring his sweet Aurora, his sunshine, home. The reward he posts for any information about her (double for her safe return) is enough for any bounty hunter worth their salt to bother looking.

By two weeks, Mal's starting to think that grabbing the kid was a bad idea. Something's niggling her about that wave: the fear in his eyes was real, but there's something off about it that sets her nerves on edge. Diaval doesn't help, tramping around the ship at all hours with the kid in tow. She still doesn't talk much for a kid her age, except to say words like "up" and "thank you," and almost never needs to touch the ground, she's in his arms that often. Watching them feels almost like sandpaper under her skin.

It's not jealousy, she tells herself. She's not jealous of an ugly, snot-nosed gǒuwánrde. And it's necessary, she thinks. She'll get her revenge in the end.

* * *

After a month and a half of moving from moon to moon with no new work, Diaval knocks on the door to the bridge with a question. "Captain? When are you plannin' on sending her back?"

"Who said I was?" asks Mal with a careful shrug.

"We can't keep her forever," says Diaval, which is so ridiculous she almost laughs out loud. If anyone wants to keep the kid forever, it's not Mal.

Mal smiles sardonically. "Could send her back by way of the airlock, drop her off alone in the Avalon Wharfs, sell her-" She realizes she's gone too far a second too late. Diaval's fist slams into the wall with a clang.

"Don't even- don't even joke about that," he says. He can't quite look at her. "Don't you dare."

"I hate her," she says. It's easier than all the words she could say instead.

"No, you hate Stefan. She's not him."

"She's of him."

"Not even near the same and you know it."

"Get out."

"Why? 'Cause I'm sayin' something you don't want to hear?"

There's crying on the stairs leading to the bridge, and they both look. It's the kid, clutching her ears and screaming.

"Shut her up," says Mal, but Diaval's scooping the kid up before she's even finished her sentence.

"Hey, sweetie, it's okay, just a little shouting's all."

"Don't like me 'cause I'm bad," she says, which is more words than Mal's ever heard out of her mouth at once.

"Aw, shush," says Diaval, glaring at Mal. "I like you, it's okay."

"Can't be bad," Aurora sobs. "Feeds you spiders if you're bad."

Diaval stops at that. "What d'you mean, feeds you spiders?"

Aurora takes one hand off her ears to make a creepy crawling motion with her hand. "Spiders," she says, like he doesn't know what they are.

"Who does?"

"M' aunties. If I'm bad."

"Those pieces of gǒushǐ," he mutters venomously. Aurora looks terrified, like he's swearing directly at her. "No, you're not bad, no one's mad at you, dǒng ma?"

"Not bad?"

"Not at all."

"Not 'cause I'm..."

Diaval hushes her. "Not for any reason, ānān, never ever. Come on," he says, walking away. "Let's leave the captain alone."

He doesn't talk to her for hours. Maybe half a day, if they're using planet time. Mal shuts herself up in her bunk and tells herself it's better to be alone.

* * *

Sometimes Diaval wakes up shivering and breathing hard, sweat soaking through his nest of a bunk and the whole ship feeling too small for him. He'll go up to the galley, make sure the food's still there (he's never sure unless he checks). If it's a very bad night, he'll sit in the bridge and look at the stars through the big dash windows, Fènfēi on autopilot.

Sometimes he'll fall asleep in the pilot's chair until Mal gently shakes him awake and send him back to his bunk. "Go to bed, yǔyì," she'll say. "No use to me if you get a neck cramp sleepin' like that."

This time he checks on Aurora instead of the food (she's sleeping peacefully in his bunk), and he doesn't sleep because he can't, and even awake he can't seem to stop shaking. His skin hurts where it's pulled tight from his scars, ghost pain.

Footsteps on the stairs. The door to the bridge opens, closes. Silence. Finally she says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have... I should've thought."

He scrubs a hand over his face. "Yeah, you should've."

"I wasn't-"

"I know."

Silence. She breaks it first. "You need anything?"

She's never asked that before. He shakes his head. "Nah. I'll just-" He stands up, moves toward where he's got a blanket stashed. Their hands both reach, but she reaches the locker first.

"Here," she says, almost awkwardly. "No use freezin'."

"Yeah," he says.

She walks away too quickly for him to say more.

* * *

It's Diaval who notices the fine silver scars on Aurora's temples, almost invisible against her milky white skin. He's brushing her hair - tells Mal that it calms her down, but hell, it calms him down more than it does her, sometimes - when the light hits just right and he sees them, and once he's seen them he has to look again, just to be sure that they're not just his eyes playing tricks. He's careful not to touch them, or even acknowledge that he's seen them, but it makes him wonder why the school had armed guards and locked bedroom doors from outside.

He waits until later, when Mal's up in the bridge and won't disturb them, or be disturbed if Aurora gets upset and starts screaming. And then he asks her, in words she'll understand, what happened at the school. And slowly, in bits and pieces, she tells him.

* * *

"They tortured her," Diaval says later. He put Aurora to bed after she cried herself to sleep. His hands haven't stopped shaking since he tucked her in. "They- they stuck things in her brain and they hurt her and-"

"You know why?"

Diaval shakes his head. "Don't even think she does. She said somethin' about bein' 'special,' that her daddy let her go with 'the bad people,' but nothin' about why. But it happened, Mal, don't say it didn't."

"I'm not," she says. "I just want to know why."

"Does it matter why? She's not even six, Mal."

"You weren't even eight, when you got sold."

"Just makes it worse, then." He runs a hand through his hair in an effort not to clench his fists. "How could they do that to a kid? How could anyone ever-"

"Alliance chews you up and spits you out," says Mal. "I don't know why they did this to her, but if it's as you say, I wouldn't put it past Stefan to do it for himself. He'd sell his own mother if it'd get him up the chain of command, if he had a mother to sell."

"Then we can't give her back," says Diaval. "If he's just going to send her back for them to muck around in her brain, then we can't him have her."

"There's a price on her head-"

"-and yours, and mine-"

"-that's bigger than both ours put together. What happens if bounty hunters pick her up? Or Alliance?"

"If," he says. "Come on. If we give her back, aren't we just giving him what he wants?"

She purses her lips for a long minute, mulling it over. "Fine," she says at last, as if she doesn't care. "But first sign of trouble, we bail, dǒng ma?"

* * *

This is how it goes: she's security, he's transportation.

They start getting jobs again. Mal starts coming home needing a bath more often. "Don't want to talk about it," she says when he asks.

This is how it goes: he gets the jobs, she takes them.

By now, Aurora's been on every screen, Stefan demanding her safe return. There's no point in getting a babysitter for the most famous face in the 'verse, so Diaval picks up the job while Mal watches her, and waits with Aurora instead of following Mal around. Mal jokes sometimes about how she appreciates this new arrangement, not being watched like a hawk anymore. She never means it.

This is how it goes: they tell the dock hands and checkpoint officers that she's security, he's transportation. They just never say just who they're transporting, who they're protecting. As partnerships go, it's not as simple anymore.

* * *

The thing about the kid is that she's not afraid of Mal. She's quiet, but it's a thoughtful quiet: she's not loud unless something happens to scare her. She answers to Mal calling her a "gǒuwánrde" same as she does to Diaval calling her "ānān": with a giggle and a gap-toothed grin. She finds herself playing in the engine room with Aurora one day while Diaval's scouting jobs, and she doesn't mind at all when she gets engine oil across her face and on her hands.

When he comes back, Diaval notices. "Your face!" he says, throwing his head back and laughing. She takes advantage of the opportunity to use his face as a towel to wipe her filthy hands. Diaval sputters. "Hey!" She moves in again, fueled by adrenaline and laughter, but he grabs her wrist just firm enough to keep her from him. They grapple, her other hand touching his nose too quick to catch, but almost simultaneously stop. They're too close, breathing too hard, too comfortable with each other's touch.

They part awkwardly, without apologizing.

She wonders when she started being able to laugh without bitterness.

She wonders when she started thinking of the kid as Aurora.

* * *

Mal's out on a job, a protection detail for some Eavesdown mob boss who thinks he looks more manly if his bodyguard has tits. Diaval takes Aurora out for more groceries: they've money enough for more than protein now, and it's been months since they've had that luxury.

It's not until they're walking back that Diaval gets the idea they're being followed. He takes a roundabout path through the Eavesdown docks, never letting his eye linger on any one ship. As he crosses between two big rustbuckets, he realizes that he's got feds on all sides.

The first one to try and grab him gets a knee to the groin; the other, an elbow to the stomach. Another grabs his arm and forces him to his knees. One of them has Aurora- she's screaming, he's twisting in their hold, there's a sharp electric pain straight to center of his chest-

* * *

Mal comes back, exhausted, to an empty ship. She doesn't have to ask herself why they're gone, only where they could be. The Cortex offers up what it knows: a wanted felon and the missing girl. She's going back to her father. He's in processing.

She starts up Fènfēi's engines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chinese translations for this chapter:
> 
> Chāchìnánfēi - idiom: "Even given wings, you couldn't fly"; impossible to escape.  
> jīfèn - pent-up anger  
> Bìzuǐ - shut up  
> shuāirén - loser; jerk  
> ānān - term of endearment for a little girl, akin to calling someone "honey"  
> gǒuwánrde - beast (derog.)  
> gǒushǐ - dog shit  
> dǒng ma - understand?  
> yǔyì - literally, "wing;" figuratively, "assistant."


	3. Bǐyìqífēi

The Criminal Processing Center on Persephone is packed: too many cells and not enough staff. Some wait there for years, forgotten by the system. A handful of bribe money and wearing her hair down gets her to the office. A few coy smiles that promise more gets her to his cell. The third guard, the one actually assigned to him, is clearly new and struggling to be professional, pointedly not looking at her swinging hips or her wide red smile. They don't ask her what relation she is to him, and maybe it's for the best, because she can't for the life of her think of a good answer.

He's in one corner of the tiny room, sprawled as if he hasn't moved since he was thrown there. His shirt's gone completely, revealing a pattern of bruises on his back and arms. A trickle of blood runs from his nose, and there's a deep, claw-shaped wound just under his heart.

She gets on her knees next to him. This close, she can hear his breathing, stuttering in and out as if each one costs him. Diaval's eyes blink open, then widen as he recognizes her. His mouth moves to say something - maybe her name - but she silences him with a finger to his lips. "Hush," she says, “don’t try to talk.” He obeys her, though she's not sure if it's because he understands the need for secrecy or if he's too far gone to do anything but follow orders right now.

She pulls him into something like a hug, though his left arm dangles uselessly at his side. He inhales sharply, not quite hiding the pain in it.

"Don't get too excited, yǔyì, I'm getting you out of here," she breathes too low for anyone else to hear, her lips hidden by her hair. "Can you walk?"

One shoulder rises and falls in a deliberate and imperceptible shrug. At least it's not a no. Mal makes a show of it, arranges him gently on the floor again, then stands up. "Thank you so much for letting me see him," she tells the guard, tracing a finger around his belt loops. "I'm that grateful."

"Well, now, miss-" says the guard, flustered, but Mal's deft fingers have found the trigger of the man's gun. She's drawn it before he can make another sound.

"Not one more word," she says. "Hands up. Now."

* * *

She leaves him in the cargo hold while she gets them out of there, as he's in no shape to climb the multiple flights of stairs to the bridge. It's not until they're well away from Persephone and she's sure they're not being followed that she puts Fènfēi on autopilot and sets course for a distant moon.

When she comes back down, he's managed to haul himself up to the infirmary alone and is sitting on the exam table trying to wet a sterile swab with disinfectant one-handed. The little bottle is missing half of what it used to have: the rest is spilled on the floor, along with a couple of the swabs. His whole body is shuddering with the effort of holding himself up. He looks up as she walks in, stammering apologies.

"Captain, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

"Quit apologizin'," she says, "it ain't your fault." Neither of them mean the mess. She takes the bottle of disinfectant from him and nods at his arm. "That broken or dislocated?"

"Dislocated. Couldn't pop it back in by my- _fuck!_ Cào nǐ māde _bī!_ "

She ignores the comment about her mother. Instead she gets a cooling pack from one of the drawers and cracks it, draping it over the purpling bruises on his shoulder. She picks up the bottle of disinfectant, wets a swab and starts dabbing at the deep punctures on his chest. "Hold that pack there. What's this from?"

He hisses. "Dunno. Electric claw thing under my skin. They wanted to know how and why I'd gotten her."

"What'd you say?"

"That I'd been waitin' for the hype to die down until I could collect the ransom money. Didn't believe me, but I didn't say anythin' else, so eventually they told me to wait until some higher-ups came to deal with me."

"Higher-ups?"

He shrugs with his good shoulder. "No idea. Didn't get a chance to meet them. Couldn't have told them anything anyway. Couldn't even remember what my gorram name was at that point."

She puts a cloth pad over his chest and binds it with a length of bandage. She ties it off without looking at him, wets another swab. She tilts his chin away from her with two fingers, brushing the hair from his face to wipe away blood from a cut high on his forehead.

"Shouldn't have dragged you into this," she says, more to herself than him. "Too wrapped up in revenge to see what the hell I was doin'. And now she's going back to that hùndàn, and he'll do who-knows-what-all-"

"So let's break her out."

"What?"

"We stole her once, we can do it again."

"They'll expect that."

"So we do it in a way they don't expect."

"And how do you propose we do that?"

"Someone let us go, back at the school. You weren't on the bridge, you didn't see- we were landlocked. There was no way we should have been able to get off that station. I hadn't even finished _tryin'_ to sequence the code. And it got lifted anyway. Someone let us go."

"What are you sayin'?"

"I'm sayin' we try to figure out who it is."

"By what? Backtracin' the signal until it-" Mal closes her mouth. "Well, maybe we should do that, then."

"Yeah."

"Don't get too smart," she says. "You'll want to be captain next."

He wheezes out a laugh. "Nah, not me."

"Well, good. Only one of those and that's me."

Diaval looks sidelong at the hand on his face and grins. "Pretty sure that cut on my face is clean."

She almost drops the swab. "Right."

The proximity alarm goes off.

"I should check that out," she says. "Wait here."

By the time she comes back (bit of space junk, nothing more), he's lying against the backrest, eyes closed. She puts a hand on his forehead, suspicious. "No fever," she says, "just sweaty. You alright?"

"Threw up while you were gone," he says. "In the sink. 'M sorry."

"Can you make it to your bunk without swooning on me like some Core lady?" Diaval nods. "Okay, then," she says, and puts the end of their last conversation firmly out of mind.

* * *

Mal sends out little tendrils of code. One goes to Stefan, to see how long he's keeping Aurora. The word comes back: not until he can be assured of her safety. Translation: not until the ones pulling his strings tell him he's allowed. Mal gives herself at least a week as a deadline.

Another mirrors the impression the anti-landlock code left on their console history and sends it back to the school. It will come up as a glitch unless someone is looking for it. It says: _we want information_. The faintest of signals comes back: _we'll meet on Bernadette._

* * *

Diaval doesn't like Bernadette. It's too crowded and fake-shiny, too full of bad memories. But he's been bored after three days in his bunk with nothing but cooling packs and Mal's attempts at soup for company, and he doesn't want to leave her alone here. Not when loners on Bernadette are seen as targets.

Mal raises her eyebrows at him when he emerges from his bunk, his arm still in its sling. "Should you be up?"

"And leave you to a possible trap? Never."

Mal hands him a laser pistol. They don't bring it out often, and it's often more trouble than it's worth: a mis-aimed shot while in flight could blow a hole in the ship's hull and suffocate them all, not to mention its limited battery and tendency to overheat. But they'll be on land, and it has no kickback like a gun has: he won't need to hold it two-handed to keep it steady, or hold it against his bad shoulder like he would if he used a rifle.

It might also be the most expensive gun they own.

Diaval blinks. "Thanks."

"Keep your eyes peeled," says Mal. "If we're lucky, you won't need to use it."

* * *

Their contact is to meet them outside the Church of Our Lady of the Stars. They don't expect their contact to be three contacts, three women in drab clothes.

Mal puts a hand on her gun. "Which one of you's the one I talked to 'cross the Cortex?" The youngest, a blonde in a dull yellow dress, inclines her head. "You didn't mention others."

"You didn't mention him," she replies in clipped Alliance tones, looking at Diaval. "Yet here we both are."

"Fine, we both brought backup. What have you got to tell us?"

It's not the blonde who answers, but one of the older women, with blue streaks through her grey hair. "We have reason to understand that you were the ones who took our... mutual acquaintance with you for a while. Is that true?"

"Who says we were?" snaps Mal. Her grip on her gun tightens. The third woman, the oldest, laughs.

"Don't try and play us for fools, dear, we're not stupid. Tell me, was she happy with you?"

"'Course the was," says Mal. "And if she wasn't, well, it wasn't us who did her harm." There's an accusation in her eyes, and the three of them avert their gazes first.

"No," says the oldest woman. "No, that's true."

"It wasn't bad at first," says the youngest. "It's like diamonds, you know? Diamonds need to be cut and polished, lose some extraneous parts, if they're to be truly worth something. They tell you, it's supposed to be this way. It's for their own good. But then they started telling us to increase the tests, train them more, punish them if they didn't behave exactly as we told them-"

"Tests?" says Diaval, just as Mal says, "Them?"

The one with blue streaks shakes her head. "Not a 'them' anymore. She was our most promising student. Only a few others have been so successful, and not at our facility, not one so young." She sighs. "We had so many failures. They told us to neutralize all of the ones we couldn't train. They didn't give us a choice. They just came one day and took them all. Well, all but her."

"What were you training her for?" asks Diaval. "What were you testing?"

"It was an experiment," says the eldest. "To create a perfect assassin. There were other experiments, other facilities, with older children. We weren't involved in those projects. But they'd never tried to make one from before they were even born."

"We built all sorts of things into their DNA," says the second. "Not all of them take, sometimes. We can put in genes for intelligence, or beauty, but we can't control how they grow, so it's always a bit of a gamble."

"But she was _perfect_ ," says the youngest. "She was growing up just how we wanted her to. And then they asked us to make her better. And we tried, but- they took over her testing. They gave us strict orders on how to punish her, how to train her." She looks at Diaval. "And then two people, no references, not the usual crew, came to deliver our monthly supply. I can't say you were very subtle about your intentions."

"So you let us take her," says Diaval.

"Anything would have been better than what we were doing at that point," she says flatly.

"So you lifted the landlock." She nods. "Alliance would kill you for that."

"I blamed it on a glitch," she says. "But I'm sure they still suspect us."

"That's why we're giving you these." The oldest reaches into a pocket of her muted red dress and pulls out a microchip, placing it in Mal's outreached hand. "This is the truth," she says. "All the data, all of what we did, it's on here. Do what you want with it, but if it helps her in any way..."

Mal nods. "I understand."

"I don't expect we'll see you again," says the youngest. "Even if we... if we're not caught. So, if you see her again... could you tell her we're sorry?"

"If," Mal says eventually. "If we do, then yes, I'll tell her."

She shrugs. "I suppose that's all we can ask."

* * *

They look at the microchip's contents after they're well off-planet. Most of it's jargon that's completely incomprehensible to both of them, long strings of chemical names and detailed descriptions of methodology and phrases like "homologous recombination" and "transcription activator-like effector nucleases."

There's a couple of recordings attached, each labelled with its session number and "Subject BR79."

Diaval has to stop watching midway, too close to throwing up again and hands shaking too much to even punch the wall. Mal burns every second of it into her memory, so she knows exactly what sounds Stefan should make when she kills him.

* * *

Stefan's mansion on Avalon is well outside the city limits, with its own grounds and landing strip. Diaval lands Fènfēi well away from it, hidden in a relatively abandoned-looking patch of woods. Mal's prepping the land speeder when he comes down from the bridge, carrying a bag brought from the armory.

"There's not a single person on those grounds, you know," he says. "He's waitin' for you. We go in, we might not come back out again."

"Then don't come," says Mal, not looking up. "It ain't your fight anyway."

He stares at her open-mouthed. "Like hell it ain't! What, this the thanks I get for stickin' with you all these years? 'I need you for this job, Diaval,'" he says, his voice dripping with snark. "'I can't this pull off without you, Diaval'-"

"Bìzuǐ." She hands him a gun and takes the driver's seat of the Mule. "Let's go."

* * *

The way in to the mansion is almost laughably easy. They could walk in the front door if they wanted to, it's that quiet, but they still sneak in on the off chance that there's booby traps or hidden alarms they might not know about.

Aurora's in the top-most room, sleeping, but her eyes fly open the moment Mal makes a too-loud step across the tiled floor, running for her even before she's fully awake to hug her legs. Mal scoops her up to cradle her close.

"Hello, gǒuwánrde," whispers Mal. "Sorry it took us so long." She passes her to Diaval, who holds her even tighter.

"I'm sorry, ānān, I'm sorry I let them take you away. It's not gonna happen again, dǒng ma?"

"Wanna go home," Aurora mumbles into Diaval's shoulder.

"We can do that," says Mal, and she feels her heart jump a bit at the mention of home. "That what you want?"

Aurora nods.

Quietly, they pick their way through the empty halls. The rooms are strange in the dark, too still, too-

An iron net falls from the ceiling, knocking Mal off her feet. Diaval runs for her, but a swarm of Alliance soldiers moves at the same time, emerging from all corners of the room. There's a hum of electricity and Mal screams. Three shots and three Alliance men are down; three more and Diaval tosses the empty gun away. Next gun, reload, fire, keep moving. Mal reaches for the laser pistol at her belt even as she seizes from the electric charge, sends it spinning across the floor towards him with the last of her strength. Diaval ducks and grabs the pistol, finally close enough to stand over her. Gun raised, he pulls the net off of her, ignoring the pain in his shoulder.

"Move!"

Mal rolls away from the net, drawing her gun and shooting down two more of Stefan's men as they try and reach Diaval. Winded, she fires mechanically, dropping whatever guns she can't reload quickly. Stefan's there, she realizes, at the center of the room, and she takes aim at him even as he does the same to her.

The world shrinks to her gun and his. The others don't dare try and shoot her, given that a wide shot in close quarters could strike their governor, and neither do either of them shoot in case the other does. They hang there, suspended in orbit around each other. She doesn't hear anything but the roar of blood in her ears, doesn't notice when one of Stefan's men gets a lariat around Diaval's neck and he falls to the floor, suddenly starved for air. Another steps on Diaval's hand, breaking his wrist, and the pistol falls from his numb fingers. The soldier kicks it out of range.

It spins across the polished floors to rest at Aurora's feet.

She looks at it with curiosity, not fear. A childish frown spreads across her face, as if she'd been building a block tower and it's only just now fallen down.

"No," she says, picking it up. No one sees her do so. "No," she says again, and she holds the gun with an expert's grip. She fires in a circle, four bodies hitting the ground in succession. A fifth laser shot goes cleanly through her father's knee. He falls. No one sees her drop the gun.

Mal watches him go down even as she rises to her feet. Her gun is solid in her hand, her aim true. She trains her gun on a bead of sweat at the center of Stefan's forehead.

"Let my man go, or I'll shoot!"

"Do as she says," orders Stefan. The men lower their weapons, startled, and Diaval pulls the loop off his neck with a gasp.

"Now drop them," says Mal. They do. She casts only the quickest of glances at Diaval. "Take her," she says. "Get out of here." He hesitates, looking at the gun in her hand. "That was an order, yǔyì," she says. "Get her out of here and don't look back."

No one moves as Diaval lifts Aurora with his good arm and takes off at a run. His footsteps echo on the polished parquet floors.

"Now that we're alone," says Mal with bitter humor, "why'd you do it? Why'd you let them use her as some kind of lab rat?"

"Sacrifice is necessary for power," he says. He's rattling under her gun, more sweat gathering at his greying temples. "The greatest power comes from the greatest of sacrifices. What more could I give than my own child? And when they found that she was perfect... well, of course she was. Because she was mine. My rewards are great because my contributions are great."

"Is that all any of us are? Sacrifices?"

"That's how the world works, Mal," he says, and oh, she'd forgotten how her name sounded on his lips. It feels wrong, somehow, dirty.

"You're not sorry at all, are you?" Mal says with disgust.

Stefan looks at her gun. He looks almost tired, and he seems so old, almost useless without the flash of cameras and the firm lines of a tailored suit. "What do you want, Mal? For me to apologize? You'd have done it, too, if you'd had the ambition."

"You know, I think I never truly understood you," she says. "I don't think I ever want to."

The balcony doors are open. She shoots. Stefan goes down with a bullet to the brain, and she turns, runs out to the balcony, stands on the edge of it-

-falls-

-and lands in the backseat of the Mule with a hard thump, rolling between the seats. Diaval's in front, Aurora in his lap.

"Thought I told you to take her and go," says Mal, still a bit disoriented from the hard landing.

"Yeah, well, I'm shit at following orders," he says. "Grenades in the bag back there, by the way."

"Oh, really?" says Mal, and she grins.

* * *

They leave behind more than a burning house. Only once they're well on their way to orbiting another planet does Diaval feel safe enough to put Aurora to bed in his own bunk and start to look to his wounds.

Mal sets his broken wrist in the infirmary with a distinct sense of déjà vu. "We should get a full-time medic," she says idly, "if you're going to keep bustin' yourself up like this."

"You come home from a job at all hours with all sorts of hurts, and you only think of gettin' a medic when _I_ break a wrist?" he says.

"I'd punch you, but there's a sudden lack of things I can punch without hurtin' you permanently."

Diaval laughs, though hoarsely. His throat is still damaged from the rope around his neck. She runs her fingers along the bruising and he flinches.

"Guess we're even," she says. He raises an eyebrow in confusion. "You saved my life back there. A life for a life, I s'pose." Her hands spreading bruise cream on his neck are gentle, even though her hands shake a bit.

"Don't follow," says Diaval.

"If you want to quit the partnership, if you want to take Aurora and start a life somewhere else, I won't stop you. I can't keep steerin' you into danger like this, not without thinkin'. It's selfish."

If anything, Diaval only looks insulted. "You saying I was only here 'cause of you savin' my life? 'Cause let me tell you, captain, we made that bargain a long time ago, and nothin' about it said I was only here because I had to be. That's not a partnership, otherwise."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying if I wanted to leave, I would've ditched years ago. But I didn't. Because of you."

"Me?"

"Well, yeah." He won't look at her. "Was hopin' you'd feel the same way, but if you don't, well, I understand that, too."

His eyes are sincere, though he still looks like he expects her to slap him. It hits her like a shot from behind: she believes him.

This is Diaval, who has no agenda, who doesn't think of other people as pawns to be sacrificed. He's killed for her, he's almost died for her, and she trusts him more than she trusts anybody. She puts the tube of cream down and cradles his face in her hand. He leans into the touch, letting her pull him up to meet her lips.

His kisses don't demand anything. They take nothing without asking first. They're sweet and gentle, letting Mal decide how far she wants to go. He has to come up for air before she does, but he doesn't move away. Instead, he shifts, pulling her to him with the hand that has the cast and resting his forehead on her shoulder. She weaves her fingers through his hair and he sighs.

It feels right, to be like this. She wonders why she never thought of it before.

* * *

This is how it goes: she's security, he's transportation.

He'll wake up with a nightmare, and she'll stroke his hair until he feels safe again. She'll get tripped up by someone's hand on her shoulder or a comment that hits too close, and he'll pull her out until she's calm enough to go back and lay the guy out with a solid punch.

This is how it goes: he gets the jobs, she takes them.

"What do you say we take Aurora to the zoo for her birthday?"

"Aren't we meeting our client there?"

"Nothing says we can't show up a few hours early," he points out, and she laughs.

"If you buy her an ice planet again-"

"-that was _one time_ -"

This is how it goes: they're all three of them scarred, not always in places easily seen. They fit together, not always neatly or simply. They're still flying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chinese translations for this chapter:
> 
> bǐyìqífēi - lit. to fly wing to wing (idiom) / two hearts beating as one / (of a couple) inseparable  
> Cào nǐ māde bī! - fuck your mother's cunt.  
> hùndàn - prick
> 
>  
> 
> [There's a whole Wikipedia page of Mandarin profanity. I am ecstatic.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity)
> 
>  
> 
> [There's also a Firefly wiki for anyone interested in some of the little tidbits I put in.](http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page)

**Author's Note:**

> Title's from the last verse of the fan-written additions to the Firefly theme song.


End file.
